Baader A Film by christoph Roth
This never happened before: four German films competing for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale! Tom Tykwer’s Heaven was given the honor of opening the festival. Dominik Graf’s Der Felsen (A Map of the Heart) was the most innovative and with the wonderful actress Caroline Eichhorn (awarded a Bavarian Film Prize for her role in this film). Christopher Roth’s Baader, the most controversial, received the Alfred Bauer Prize. And Halbe Treppe (Grill Point) was liked by everyone jury, critics, public. Bravo, Andreas Dresen! None of these films were slick comedies with winsome people, but on the more serious to cheerless side, and all were sellouts.
For some time now, reflective filmmakers have taken the time, trouble, and responsibility of portraying as normal people the former »Heroes of the RAF« (or Rote Armee Faktion, dissolved ten years ago) and particularly those branded as »fanatics« and »monsters«. Volker Schloendorff’s Die Stille nach dem Schuss (Rita’s Legends) was awarded a Silver Bear at the 2000 Berlinale &sh<; Best Actresses: Bibiana Beglau and Nadja Uhl. Christian Petzold’s Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In), a psychogram of an underground terrorist family (father, mother, daughter) on the run, was invited to the 2000 Venice festival, then named »the critical discovery of the year« in the Week of the Critics section at the 2001 Cannes festival.
Two documentaries also had an impact. Gerd Conradt’s Starbuck Holger Meins, a personal portrait of the director’s classmate at the Berlin Film Academy who later became a RAF member, was presented as a work-in progress at the 2001 Leipzig DOKfilm festival. The screening was accompanied by a presentation of Conradt’s comprehensive 200-page photo-text biography titled Starbuck: Holger Meins, Portrait as Time-Image (Berlin: Expresso Verlag, 2001) see photo (courtesy Gerd Conradt). And, above all, there was Andreas Veiel’s Black Box BRD, our own choice of »Film of the Year 2001« see citation in KINO 76.
To the above should be added two more award-winning feature films: Margarethe von Trotta’s Die bleierne Zeit (The German Sisters), awarded the Golden Lion at the 1981 Venice festival, and Reinhard Hauff’s Stammheim, awarded the Golden Bear at the 1986 Berlinale. So far as stage plays dealing with the RAF are concerned, the most important was the Pip Simmons’s production of Das erste Baader-Meinhof Stück (The First Baader-Meinhof Play) at the Schauspielhaus Bochum in 1974. But it should also be noted that Fred Kelemen, a graduate of the Berlin Film Academy, premiered Oliver Czeslik’s play stammheim proben (Rehearsing Stammheim) on stage at the Sophiensäle in Berlin at the same time as Christopher Roth premiered Baader on screen at the Berlinale.
In Baader, an independent production without subsidy support, Christopher Roth ventures forth in a different direction than other films on Baader-Meinhof and the RAF terrorists, the icons of the left scene. His film, about the early years of the RAF, is not documentary, but fiction. And this is the singular creation of an individual talent: Roth functions as producer, screenwriter, director, and editor, all rolled into one.
Frank Giering is Andreas Baader, playing the role with some of the latter’s charisma. A car thief on his way to becoming a department-store arsonist, Baader is arrested freed by Ulrike Meinhof (Birge Schade) and flees to Jordan. He’s accompanied there by Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin (Laura Tonke), the best known members of the RAF and its most fascinating personalities (as evidenced in Margarete von Trotta’s The German Sisters). Christopher Roth presents us with an opponent for Baader, one who represents the State as Head of the Federal Crime Agency (Horst Herold), given the name Kurt Krone in the film. Krone is personified by Vadim Glowna, who gives a riveting performance that goes to the heart of the matter.
Baader is not »RAF real« rather, it’s conceived as a gangster movie with a wild shootout at the end. Or, as Christopher Roth said in an interview: »This death of Baader is presented as a huge question mark. Is it really so heroic? Everyone loses, also the police chief. No one benefits from it in any way. We always made sure that now no one can say: this one is the good guy, and that one is the bad guy.«
One scene, although it never really happened, stands out above others. Baader and Krone meet at night in a car the terrorist and the terrorist-hunter. They respect each other. And they know that neither of them can win. Who, then, is the loser?
Dorothea Holloway
Baader. Germany, 2001. 72 Film (Berlin), with Group.IE (Frankfurt). Prod Stephan Fruth, Christopher Roth, Mark Gläser. Co-Prod Mark Egeton. Dir Christopher Roth. Scr Christopher Roth, Moritz von Uzlar. Cam (digital) Bella Haben, Jutta Pohlmann. Ed Barbara Ries, Christopher Roth. Set Atilla Saygel. Cast Frank Giering (Andreas Baader), Laura Tonke (Gudrun), Vadim Glowna (Kurt Krone), Birge Schade (Ulrike), Jana Pallaske (Karin), Sebastian Weberstein (Holger), Sarah Riedel (Inga), Bastian Trost (Raspe). 129 min, color, 35mm.